How to Connect PS4 Controller To Your Windows PC

The PS4 is all-dominant on the console scene. It has the better games repertoire, better marketing, and it has a “Share” button on its controller, which apparently counts for a lot among many of today’s gamers.

But us PC folk know that the greatest gaming joys are found on our rigs, and the complaint that it’s awkward to set up gamepads with a PC is a complete myth. I’m going to prove that by showing you how easy it is to connect your PS4 controller to your Windows PC.

Wireless/via Bluetooth (make sure your PC has Bluetooth)

With your controller off, hold the “Share” and “PS” buttons on the DualShock 4 until the light bar starts flashing.

Your controller should appear in the “Manage Bluetooth devices” window on your PC as “Wireless Controller.” Click “Pair” then enter a passcode of your choice and click Next.

Your controller is now connected, and you can play any game that has support for the PS4 controller (such as the excellent Rocket League) as well as any games you may have running on emulators. It’s worth noting that the vast majority of controller-compatible Steam games are only compatible with Xbox controllers, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Wired

Connect your PS4 controller to your PC using a micro-USB cable, and you’re good to go (except for games compatible specifically with the X360 controller).

Use your PS4 controller for X360 controller-compatible games

If you want to make your entire games library work with your PS4 controller, you’ll need to get a program that maps your DualShock 4 controls onto the Xbox controller drivers built into Window 10. (If you’re unsure whether you have the Xbox 360 controller drivers for Windows, get them here.)

Next, download Input Mapper and install it on your PC. This is, in my opinion, the best PS4-X360 controller mapper around. It works smoothly and doesn’t do anything dodgy like hijacking your Bluetooth drivers (which other similar programs, such as MotionInJoy, sometimes do).

Open InputMapper. Whether your controller is connected wirelessly or via a cable, it should detect your controller automatically, setting up a profile for it and effectively turning it into an Xbox 360 controller right away, with all the PS4 gamepad buttons automatically mapped to their X360 equivalents.

Click the small icon with the “+” sign on it next to the Bluetooth icon to take a look at all the controller settings. While most of these work fine as they are, I like to make the PS4 trackpad usable as a mouse, which you can do by clicking the Configuration tab, then ticking the “Trackpad as Mouse” box – particularly useful if you’re playing on the couch in front of the TV and can’t be bothered to go over to your computer when you want to change games.

Conclusion

And that’s it! You’re now using the best gamepad in the world on the best gaming platform in the world. It’s worth noting that Sony recently released an official PC dongle that connects your PS4 controller to your PC.

You pay $25 for basically the same functionality you get using the above method, which isn’t great in comparison. If you don’t have Bluetooth on your PC, then you can always get a Bluetooth dongle for about $5 that will do the same job as Sony’s official one. Don’t waste your money!

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